Earlier this year, news broke that a biopic about “Out of Africa” writer Karen Blixen, who published under the pseudonym Isak Dinesen, was in the works. Now the project has lined up a director. Deadline confirms “Queen of Hearts” filmmaker May el-Toukhy has signed on to helm “The Lioness.”
Based on Tom Buk-Swienty’s biography, “The Lioness” will focus on Blixen’s time running a coffee farm in Kenya from 1914-1931. El-Toukhy will write the script with Jakob Weis (“That Time of Year”). Nordisk Film is producing, and the film is expected to open in 2022.
“Out of Africa,” Blixen’s memoir about her years in Kenya, was adapted into a 1985 film and won seven Oscars, including best picture. Meryl Streep landed a best actress nod for portraying Blixen.
Born in Denmark in 1885, Blixen chafed against the confines of her upper class, Victorian upbringing. She eventually established her own coffee farm in colonial Kenya and spent 17 years there. Due to hardships caused by World War I, poor harvests and natural disasters, the beginning of the Great Depression, and personal tragedy, she had to give up the farm. Short stories “Babette’s Feast” and “The Immortal Story” — both of which were also adapted into films — and “Out of Africa” follow-up memoir “Shadows on the Grass” are among Blixen’s other notable works. She died in 1962 at the age of 77.
“I have always regarded Karen Blixen as a victim. As a woman who paid a high price on a personal level in spite of the great recognition she received in her professional life as an author,” el-Toukhy admitted. “But when I read Tom Buk-Swienty’s book I realized that her life in Africa was filled with contradictions. She was not only a victim – she was also dominant and enslaved by her emotions.”
The filmmaker added, “My dream is to create a film about the experiences that gave birth to the literature of Karen Blixen later in life. It is the story of a privileged woman with an almost greedy lust for adventure. She strives to live an authentic life and thereby challenges the expectations of the bourgeois structures she was brought up in,” el-Toukhy explained. “And once she returns from Africa after 17 turbulent years she is forever changed. ‘The Lioness’ is a universal story of an intricate and passionate human being.”
“Queen of Hearts,” el-Toukhy’s portrait of a woman who has an affair with her stepson, premiered at Sundance in January and won the fest’s Audience Award in the World Cinema – Dramatic category. The pic opened in its native Denmark in March and is expected to hit U.S. theaters later this year. El-Toukhy previously helmed features “White Man’s Burden” and “Long Story Short.”
